Abner Louima - Background and Incident

Background and Incident

In 1997, 30-year-old Abner Louima was married, had one child, and had been living in Brooklyn for the previous six years. Although he had trained as an electrical engineer in Haiti, Louima worked as a security guard in a water-and-sewage plant in Flatlands, Brooklyn.

On August 9, 1997, Louima visited Club Rendez-Vous, a popular nightclub in East Flatbush. Late in the night, he and several other men interceded in a fight between two women. The police were called and several officers from the 70th Precinct were dispatched to the scene. There was a confrontation between the police, patrons and bystanders involved in the scuffle outside the club. The responding patrol officers included Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese, among others. In the ensuing scuffle, Volpe was struck by a "sucker-punch" and identified Louima as his assailant. Volpe arrested Louima on charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest. Volpe later admitted he was mistaken about Louima being his assailant.

The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station. On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being sexually assaulted in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Volpe kicked Louima in the testicles, then, while Louima's hands were cuffed behind his back, he first grabbed onto and squeezed his testicles and then sodomized him with a plunger. According to trial testimony, Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, bragging to a Police Sergeant that he, "took a man down tonight."

Louima's teeth were also badly damaged in the attack by having the plunger handle jammed into his mouth. He testified to the presence of a second officer in the bathroom helping Volpe in the assault but he could not positively identify him. The identity of the second attacker became a point of serious contention during the trial and appeals. Louima also initially claimed that the officers involved in the attack called him a racial slur and shouted, "This is Giuliani-time" during the beating. Louima later recanted this claim, and the reversal was used by defense lawyers to cast doubt on the entirety of his testimony.

The day after the incident, Louima was taken to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital. Escorting officers explained away his serious injuries being a result of "abnormal homosexual activities". An emergency room nurse, Magalie Laurent, suspecting the nature of Louima's extreme injuries were not the result of gay sex, notified Louima's family and the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau of the likelihood of sexual assault and battery. The attack left Louima with severe internal damage to his colon and bladder that required three major operations to repair. He was hospitalized for two months after the incident. .